You may stumble over her name, but you’ll recognise the striking blue eyes. The child star of Atonement on her killer role in Hanna

In the golden age of Hollywood, when Issur Danielovitch Demsky was transformed
into Kirk Douglas and Virginia McMath was made over as Ginger Rogers, you
could imagine some cigar-chomping agent putting his arm round Saoirse
Ronan’s shoulders. “Look, kid, it’s not me, it’s the damn movie-theater
owners. Ronan’s fine, we can live with that, but how about, I dunno, ‘Susie’
instead?”

With good grace for someone who probably gets asked this every single day, the
actress politely enunciates to me: “You can pronounce it Ser-sha, which is
how I usually pronounce it. Or Sair-sha, which I don’t really like. Or
Sear-sha, which is quite nice. A lot of Irish people say that.” The lovely
moniker — almost sung, in the gentle lilt of rural Co Carlow, where she grew
up and still lives — means “freedom” in Gaelic. (Agent: “I got it, kid —
Susie Freedom. Hey, we’re gonna stick ya in a